Invisible War
by Andrea Priest
For four months, I studied in Mukono, Uganda during my junior year of college. My time in Uganda was filled with excitement and learning - what was a day in the life of a Ugandan like? How did Ugandan students my age spend their free time? How was it possible that every member of the family I stayed with had a cell phone, including the 10-year-old son, but their house didn't have running water or electricity?
Over the semester, I got a better understanding for each of these questions, as well as an understanding for the war in northern Uganda that, at the time, had been waging for 18 years yet was still unresolved and ignored by both the rest of the world and Ugandans who came from the south. What I learned disheartened me.
The war is led by Joseph Kony, who heads the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Claiming to be in direct communion with the Holy Spirit, Kony is trying to kill all of the Acholi people - the tribe he comes from - and eventually take over the central government. That in itself isn't what makes the war terrible. It is the fact that in order to carry out his war, Kony abducts Acholi children and forces them to do his work for him.
One of my friends at Uganda Christian University was abducted by Kony in 1996 and was with the LRA for six months before she escaped. In that time, she had to pass through the initiation rights of killing other children by beating them with sticks (lest she be killed by her commander), stealing food from the already-starving Dinka tribe in Southern Sudan, being given as a wife to one of Kony's top commanders and being buried alive when they thought she had died from thirst.
In other cases, the "Holy Spirit" will give Kony commands that include chopping the legs off of anyone riding a bicycle or cutting the lips and noses off of people who cross the road and forcing them to eat their own body parts. How can this be ignored when so much focus is given to other wars only a few hours away?
In October of 2004, the UN admitted that the war in northern Uganda is the "worst human tragedy," and is even "worse than Darfur." So why didn't anyone know about it?
One reason is because the people getting attacked and killed are, by the world's standards, worthless. They don't have any money, natural resources or oil to offer.
Another reason is because the Ugandan government, which has been hailed by the international community as one of the best in Africa, doesn't want the rest of the world to know about the war, because they fear it would lead to a withdrawal in foreign aid.
A final reason - perhaps the most personally frustrating - is that Ugandans themselves who don't live in the north don't seem to care. It's like there are two countries (the north and the south), and as long as the people in the south are peaceful, they can completely ignore a war going on four hours away.
I will always remember an exchange that happened in my geography class while I was in Uganda. Someone asked the professor if she would vote for Museveni, Uganda's president, if he ran again the next year. She said that she would support anyone who kept the peace, so yes, she would vote for him. Someone else said, "Museveni hasn't kept the peace - what do you call the war in the north?" The professor brushed it off, saying that it didn't really count.
Living amidst this kind of apathy did more than discourage me; it ticked me off. It was also discouraging to think that Museveni hadn't taken the necessary steps to stop the war. The fact of the matter is that he doesn't care enough about it to stop it.
With the amount of aid and debt forgiveness Uganda has received in the last five years, they have more than enough resources to stop the conflict, but the desire isn't there.
I don't know what to do about this situation. Part of me wants to say that the Ugandan army should storm the north and put an end to this thing once and for all, since it has been going on for 21 years now and peace talks have failed time and time again. But since most of the soldiers in the war are children who have been abducted and are forced to kill others, I can't see how to fight against the LRA without killing innocent children who have already had enough to deal with.
This article is sadly inconclusive. But it is not pointless. I want everyone to be aware of what is going on in northern Uganda and to spread that awareness. Wars like this shouldn't be happening, and if they are, they shouldn't be hidden.
Andrea Priest is a writing graduate of Eastern University in St. Davids, PA. She currently teaches at a charter school in Indianapolis, IN.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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